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LAS VEGAS—At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this morning, Audi Chairman Rupert Stadler unveiled an in-car multimedia system powered by Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 chip. The concept system is part of the company's strategy to deliver sophisticated vehicle "infotainment" systems that don't rapidly become obsolete.

"The automobile environment has been more or less constrained because of life cycles," Stadler said in a keynote address. "A typical car life cycle is five to six years. That's multiple lifetimes [in the electronics world]."

Stadler pointed out that integrating portable devices into docks on a dashboard isn't a good solution to the problem. Mobile devices are made to attract the user's attention, he said, something you don't want when you're driving a car.

Predictably, Stadler concluded the best answer to staying connected while driving is a dedicated in-car system with a multimedia interface (MMI) built for the car. Stadler was joined by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang to unveil a future Audi MMI powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, a high-performance processor made for mobile devices and first seen in LG's Optimus 2X, recently launched in Korea and shown in the U.S. for the first time this week at CES.

Beyond merely powering the car's entertainment system, Huang demonstrated how the Tegra 2 would enable "next-generation digital cockpits." He went on to show a dashboard with 3D graphics realistically showing speed, fuel level, and other car-status information, capable of being customized in a host of different ways.

It's all part of Audi's strategy of taking the "Internet mobile into the automobile," Stadler said.

"We see a world where the car is fully connected—to the Internet, to other cars, to the cloud. The car of the future is part of the mobile world, in every sense of that word."